


It Happened Quiet

by god_commissioned_me



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Ghost Gerry, Hopeful Ending, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Martin Blackwood/Gerard Keay/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Set between S3 & S4
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:49:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29723736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/god_commissioned_me/pseuds/god_commissioned_me
Summary: Gerry is almost relieved, now, that Martin can’t see him standing on the opposite end of Jon’s hospital bed, an intruder helpless and lingering on the outskirts of his grief. Still, he stays. Maybe his presence makes no difference in the end, but even if he’d had a choice he wouldn’t have left them to suffer alone.For TMA Gerry Week 2021
Relationships: Gerard Keay & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood & Gerard Keay, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 9
Kudos: 60
Collections: TMA Gerry Week 2021





	It Happened Quiet

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the concept (inspired by [this Tumblr post](https://statementends.tumblr.com/post/637043611028144128/au-where-jon-burns-gerrys-page-but-instead-of)) that instead of disappearing when Jon burns his page, Gerry becomes a ghost tethered to Jon instead. Takes place immediately following the Unknowing.
> 
> Title from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QH28y9_dfk). I recommend listening to it before or while you read for maximum emotional impact.
> 
> Content Warnings: non-graphic mentions of injuries, canon-typical feelings of isolation and grief

The building had collapsed around them, and the flaming rubble had fallen right through Gerry’s wavering form. 

He’d thrown himself on top of Jon when he saw Tim’s finger hovering over the detonator, and though he could feel his arms squeezing tight around Jon’s neck and Jon’s slender hands pushing up against his chest, he had offered no protection. Gerry hadn’t even felt the beam that dropped through him and onto Jon’s now still chest. 

He doesn’t want to question why he’d tried to save him at all. Instinct, probably. Funny how that survived and he  _ hadn’t.  _ It’s just - every time he thinks the world has finally scooped the last bit of compassion from his chest, he stumbles into someone who needs help. For a few years, he’d been proud of that. Being able to care about other people once felt like defiance. Now it just feels like weariness. Like he’s being hollowed out with the loss of every person he can’t save. 

Jon isn’t lost, though, not yet. He isn’t dead - he can’t be, can he? Gerry is still here. Jon is the only thing tethering him to consciousness, as far as they could work out after his page was destroyed and Gerry was still  _ here,  _ so it makes sense that if Jon were no longer… well. Gerry wouldn’t be either. Right?

That’s the question he does allow himself to ask as he kneels in the rubble beside Jon, one hand stroking wisps of hair away from his temples. His braid had held despite the explosion. That feels wrong, somehow. The whole world seems broken apart, scattered, yet the Archivist’s hair remains in place.

He looks so much different like this, Gerry reflects. He remembers the harried, frantic man who had first summoned him, the sad, grim man who hugged his knees to his chest in the hotel room last night, unable or unwilling to sleep. Now his face is slack, eyes, for once, shut. If Gerry ignores the rest of his battered body, he almost looks like he’s finally getting the rest he so desperately needs. Well, if he ignores the tint of blood at the corner of his lips, anyway.

When he hears the sounds of first responders finally, finally arriving, Gerry screams for help even though he knows they can’t hear him.

“They’re coming for you, Jon,” he promises, leaning down to whisper the words into Jon’s ear. “Just rest a little longer."

\---

The sound of the explosion had been awful. The sound Martin Blackwood makes when he’s let into Jon’s hospital room some indeterminate amount of time after he was pulled from the rubble is far worse. Gerry wants to clap his hands over his ears. Or over his eyes, maybe, so he doesn’t have to see the way Martin looks at Jon’s still unconscious form beneath white sheets.

“He’s not dead,” Gerry wants to explain, to comfort him.

“He’s not dead,” he wants to shout at the doctors who talk in hushed, confused voices.

“He’s not dead,” he wants to convince himself.

Martin remains long after everyone else has gone. He stands over the bed with big, gentle hands hovering over Jon’s scarred one. He doesn’t touch him. He just weeps.

Gerry is almost relieved, now, that Martin can’t see him standing on the opposite end of Jon’s hospital bed, an intruder helpless and lingering on the outskirts of his grief. Still, he stays. Maybe his presence makes no difference in the end, but even if he’d had a choice he wouldn’t have left them to suffer alone.

\---

On the third morning, Gerry tests the limits of his new… situation. He wanders out of Jon’s room and down the corridor, watches a nurse startle when his invisible hand punches the button to summon the lift. He hates it here. He hates the muted voices and distant beeping, the too-clean smell, the looks of fragile hope on the faces of people waiting for news. They intertwine with the muddled sense memories floating in the back of his brain and make him shudder. Still, he keeps moving, drifting, waiting for the moment whatever unseen tether binding him to Jon is stretched to its fullest. He’d been able to wander around the entirety of the Institute, before. Here, he can make it to the curb outside the hospital, can stand in the breeze and watch as recovering patients are bundled into cars to be taken home.

Home. Gerry’s scoff sticks in his throat. It tastes more like longing than he wants to think about.

In the end, standing outdoors watching cars pull away, feeling the pressure deep in his chest that pulls him back to Jon, isn’t worth the illusion of freedom the fresh air provides. He goes back inside and sits at the foot of Jon’s bed.

\---

“I rented an audiobook for you,” Martin announces when he visits Jon one afternoon in the second week of Jon’s coma. “From the library. Funny, I’d forgotten CDs were still a thing. I know it’s not quite the same as your tapes, but.” He sets the clunky little CD player he’s brought on the cheap bedside table. “Better than silence all day, right?”

Gerry watches curiously as Martin pulls the plastic casing out of his bag. Something by Neil Gaiman, it looks like. He wonders if Martin chose that based on Jon’s tastes or his own.

Martin spends a few minutes bustling around the room, smoothing the thin blanket tucked around Jon’s waist, spritzing a bit of water onto the snake plant he’d brought yesterday. Gerry follows him around, drifting a few inches behind him as he works. 

“Bit by bit, we’ll get you right and cozy,” Martin says, adjusting the blinds - for Jon’s benefit or the plant’s, Gerry isn’t sure. Martin looks back at Jon. His face twists into something so fond and so broken Gerry has to turn away. “Yeah,” Martin says. His voice is strangled, but he seems determined to keep up his one-sided conversation despite the tears audibly climbing their way up his throat. “I know. I know. You aren’t too used to that, not anymore. But you will be again. I promise.” He crosses the room to stroke an imaginary strand of hair back from Jon’s face. 

If Gerry’s lungs still worked, he thinks he’d be holding his breath. He imagines, for a moment, that it’s him in the hospital bed, perhaps Gertrude standing over him. He wishes he had a gentler face to picture comforting him. 

Martin stays until it’s dark outside, and he presses play on the audio book before he leaves. Gerry curls up in one of the horrible plastic chairs and listens.

\---

“I miss you, Jon,” Martin whispers one day. Gerry doesn’t know how long it’s been anymore. It doesn’t matter, really. Long enough to have gone through more than a dozen audiobooks, long enough that the scrapes on Jon’s face have vanished and the bandages and splints have been removed from his limbs and torso. Long enough that Martin has gone too pale, washed out behind once vibrant freckles. He looks worn and hopeless and breakable like Jon had the night before the Unknowing. It makes something deep in Gerry’s chest ache, that painful empathy he’s never been able to kill digging its claws into him again. He hates it. He wants to nurture it. It feels too much like being alive.   
“He misses you too,” Gerry says. Martin doesn’t turn to look at him; of course not, he can’t hear him. “I know he does. He missed you before.”

Martin still holds Jon’s hand like he isn’t sure he’s allowed, furtive and gentle. He traces the ridges of his burn scar with the pad of his thumb and sighs. “I don’t want to go home,” he confesses. “I don’t want to leave you here alone.”

“He’s not alone.” Gerry reaches a hand toward Martin, as if he can offer any comfort. His fingers brush through Martin’s shoulder, breaking into wisps around the fabric of his shirt before flickering back into place like they always do when he touches anyone who isn’t Jon. 

Martin shivers, then drops Jon’s hand and looks toward the door. His brows pinch together. “Peter?” he says, his voice suddenly sharp.

Gerry flinches and turns too, looking for whatever invisible thing startled Martin. There’s nothing.  _ Peter? _ He hisses through his teeth and tenses. Not… not Lukas, surely?

There is no sign of fog in the room, nor any other clue to suggest the presence of Forsaken. Of course, he allows grimly, that is rather the point of it. Still, after another few moments of suspicious glances, Martin’s shoulders slump and he turns back to Jon, apparently satisfied.

“Just a chill, I suppose,” he says to Jon. Jon doesn’t stir. Martin reaches for the second, heavier blanket folded near Jon’s feet and fusses with it for a moment, drawing it up over his torso and brushing an imaginary piece of fuzz away from it. “Wouldn’t want you getting cold,” he adds gently. 

Gerry frowns, still searching the room. He doesn’t like the way Martin had said Lukas’ name, the familiarity in his voice. It feels  _ wrong _ , like dread shifting beneath his skin. 

“Oh,  _ Christ, _ ” Martin yelps suddenly.

Gerry’s form flickers again, body wavering as Martin steps through him. He can’t feel it, as usual. He tries to stay out of people’s paths anyway, but in the few times someone has walked through him they’ve always continued on as if nothing’s wrong. Now, though, he watches with widening eyes as Martin shudders and hugs himself, looking accusingly at the cooling unit. The temperature in the room hasn’t changed, but when he drops his hands, there’s visible gooseflesh prickling his forearms. 

“Oh,” Gerry says. “That’s new.”

**Author's Note:**

> I intended to post the entire fic at once, but time escaped me. There will be a second chapter! In the meantime, feel free to let me know your thoughts in the comments or [on Tumblr](https://theyrejustboys.tumblr.com/).


End file.
